It’s been interesting to research an evolving topic. The situation has evolved past the original scope of my proposal, in which I intended to cover only the most recent redistricting event, only for more redistricting conflicts to appear. Just as I thought I had figured out the 2016 redistricting, Bethune Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, another state district challenge on the grounds of race-based voter districts, happened months after I proposed my topic. While it’s too early to see what will happen, it’s like I’ve been given another puzzle piece for a picture of the future.

The data for commercials that employ celebrity appearances are as follows in the format of (celebrity appearance commercials)/(total commercials in sample) = (percentage of commercials that use celebrity appearances)

With an understanding of the methodology I would use on the samples in place, I then had to decide from where to take the samples such that it would be unlikely for a confounding variable to affect the percentage of commercials containing celebrity appearances in a way that would prevent the drawing of conclusions from the data. The most important inclusion would be samples from programs that draw very high ratings and programs that draw low to average ratings. The most obvious representative of the high ratings group is the most viewed television program in America every year: the Super Bowl. I also included several games from the NBA Finals, which have significantly lower ratings than the Super Bowl but still have much higher viewership than average television programs. Those selections were the most readily available for my research because the NBA Finals occur during the summer and the Super Bowl commercials have become a sensation in their own right such that they get posted on the Internet for posterity on web pages titled “All Super Bowl LI Commercials”.